Evening Star Newspaper, January 24, 1932, Page 25

. | | Editorial Page EDITORIAL SECTION he Sunday Star. _— Part 2—8 Pages WASHINGTON, D. €., SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 24, 1932. GENEVA CONFERENCE HAS BACKGROUND OF FAILURES Paris Peace, Washingt London Parl With9ut BY FRANK H. SIMONDS, HE approach of the date fixed for the opening of the Geneva Arms Conference naturally re- 0 t-war period at which the United gfim has been present. Of these, four have been of first importance as contrasted with the innumerable smaller gatherings at which we have been rep- resented by unofficial observers or in which we have taken only a minor part. These four are the Paris Peace Conference, the Washington Confer- ence, the Coolidge Conference at Geneva and the London Naval Confer- ence. It is, moreover, worthy of at least passing attention today, on the eve of still another meeting, that all four falled and the consequences of the several failures have been disclosed in the unhappy details of international history ever since the termination of the World War. Not less interesting is the fact that in each case the Ameri- can people were prepared in advance by their Government for success and long after the manifest failure were still confronted by claims of achieve- ment coming from official sources, Failure of Paris. To take these four conferences in order: Woodrow Wilson went to Paris informing the people of the United States in advance that a peace of un- derstanding and the creation of an in- ternational organization for the mainte- nance of peace were only possible as American idealism was directly repre- sented by the American Chief Execu- tive at Paris. The bases of this achieve- ment were to be the Fourteen Points insuring & just peace settlement and the League of Nations guaranteeing the maintenance of order in a world made safe for democracy. A dozen years after the event it is| no longer to be claimed for the Treaty of Versailles that it was a peace of un- derstanding while recent events alike in Manchuria and in Europe have dis- closed how far the League of Nations is from fulfilling any of the major hopes Wilson had for it. Moreover, the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles by the United States Senate and the continued absence of the United States from the League permapently testify to | the failure of this first conference in its American detail | The second of the conferences, that ©f Washington in 1921-22, has steadily presented a less definite picture to the public mind. Its actual achievement ‘was limited to the fixing of a ratio in and the limitation of the number of capital ships possessed by great powers and to the making of a long series of complicated political agreements in the Pacific. Viewed in the light of the ex- tations of the American people, ashington was, too, hardly less a cause for disillusionment than Paris. For, on the one side of international understanding, 8o far from marking an end to Anglo-American naval compe- tition it opened eight years of bitter- ness and recrimination. Possessing po- tential supremacy in the capital Jfip the United States proposed parity in | all categories with the British. But al- though the United States resigned its prospect of supremacy in capital ships | it did not obtain from Britain a similar Cconcession in cruisers and such parity was not_obtained even in principle un- til the London conference eight years later, and it has never been translated into fact, “Japan Supreme in Asia.” As to the Pacific treaties, in order | to persuade Japan to accept a ratio of 10-6 in capital ships, both America and Great Britain were compelled to agree not to fortify their own posses- sions extending in a wide circle from the Aleutian Islands to Malaysia and including the Philippines, Guam and Hongkong. In effect, Britain retired behind Singapore and the United States behind Hawaii, leaving to Japan com- plete supremacy in all Asiatic waters. The Anglo-Saxon nations thus re- signed to Japan the power to exploit China as it chose, and what is hap- pening in Manchuria today is ® clear consequence of the agreements signed at Washington, The effort to guard against such aggression as is now taking place in Manchuria, expressed in the nine-power treaty, with its con- sultative pact, has been demonstrated 1o have been futile and the nine-power treaty, like the Kellogg pact and the Covenant of the League, has been exposed in their contemporary use- lessness. The other effect of the Washington Conference, little observed in the United States, was the exacerbation of the relations between Britain and France, which led immediately to the fall of Briand and the arrival of Poincare and, following the inevitable failure of the Genoa Conference, from which we were absent, to the occupa- tion of the Ruhr. It is interesting to note, too, that these three conferences, Paris, Washington and Genoa, had been turn fatal for various states- men Wilson and Clemenceau were both destroyed politically by Paris, Briand by Washington and Lloyd George by Genoa After Washington there began a long period of Anglo-American recrimina- tion. While the Harding administration | assured Congress and the public that Washington had been & great triumph, h little by little came to perceive the that, although the United States ad sacrificed supremacy in the battle line, it had not acquired parity in cruisers, In fact, the eventual judg- ment was that we had obtained parity only in an obsolete category, while re- maining hopelessly inferior in the more important classes To meet the rising tide of popular vives memories of the earlier | international meetings in_the | on, Geneva and eys Are Held Success. | protest against this condition, President | Coolidge, in 1927, procured a confer- ence at Geneva, Italy and France refused to attend, but Britain and Ja- pan were present. From the start, however, this conference was doomed | because ' British and American _theses Why / Secretary of Labor | weré hopelessly at variance. At the out- set the British were not willing to con- | cede parity at all. In the latter stages | they assented only on the basis of ton- | nage figures so high as to foreshadow | an incredible expansion of naval arma- | ments. On the one hand the British | were satisfied that America' would ndt | build up to the high figures; on the | other the Americans were committed to | the double program of parity and limi- tation. Geneva, therefore, failed, and failed in the midst of an explosion of bad feeling in America and Britain cer- tainly not paralleled since the Vene- zuelan episode in the Cleveland admin- | istration. When, however, following | the Coolidge conference American pub- lic feeling clearly foreshadowed a pur- pose to achieve parity by building, if necesary, there was a far-going change | |in British sentiment. The mass of the | country, beginning at last to realize the | | disproportion betwed British and | American wealth and resources, saw | | more clearly than their Tory govern- | ment the futility of a competition and | presently turned to a Labor control. One of the major purposes of Ram- say MacDonald on taking office was to bring about an adjustment of the naval dispute between the two English-speak- | ing countries, and to that end he took the unprecedented step of crossing the | ocean. Beside the Rapidan MacDonald | and Hoover laid the bases for Anglo- | American naval parity to be ratified | at the London conference and also agreed upon in their discussions. Par- ity was after nearly 10 years of dispute | to be achieved. London Failure Assured. Nevertheless the failure of the Lon- don conference was insured because on the one hand the American President | and the British premier were agreed that the conference must Include France and Italy and on the other hand both had totally ignored French | susceptibilities and French opinions | and placed the French in the situation | of having to ratify, indeed to sign on | the dotted line, although they had not been parties to the preliminary discus- sions. | The French, therefore, came to Lon- | don resolved not to agree to any naval | program fixed by Hoover and MacDon- ald save as they, in return, were re- warded by a treaty giving them secur- ity against Italian aspirations in the Mediterranean. The Italians, on their side, came resolved upon having naval parity with Prance, the whole question of the prestige of the Mussolini regime being involved in the matter. ‘There were then three wholly irrecon- cilable Europeen theses in shock at London. Britain demanded a two- power standard in Europe. France in- sisted upon a two-power standard in | the face of Germany and Italy. Italy | demanded parity with France. As for | the United States, it desired parity | with Britain on the basis of figures | agreed upon at the Rapidan, which meant on the basis of very low ton- | nage totals. We wanted cheap parity with Britain, Britain wanted cheap security in Europe. France wanted security through Anglo-American as- surances. Italy, like the United States, desired cheap parity, but with France. As a consequence no definite five- power treaty was possible. The United States, Britain and Japan made a con- ditional agreement to last until 1935, | although even here Japan pushed her ratio from the 10-6 of Washington to the 10-7 of London. In a word the | British said to the Americans, “We will | stand by the figures of the Rapidan provided the French and Italians @o not in the meantime build in such fash- jon as to endanger our two-power standard in European waters” Anglo- American parity was thus established in principle, but the size of the fleets required to make this parity effective | was left conditional upon Franco- | Italian naval programs No Progress Since London. And, despite all the later efforts to settle the Franco-Italian issue, the question remains precisely where it was left at London. France will not resign her claim to a two-power standard in the face of Italy and Germany, as Britain will not surrender her claim to a two-power standard in the face of | | Prance and Italy. Thus, the size of the | American fleet remains _conditioned | upon the state of Pranco-Italian com- | petition. And, as after the Washing- ton conference, Franco-British relations | became bitter and after the Geneva | conference Anglo-American recrimina- tion was general, so after London Franco-Italian disputes disturbed Eu- Topean tranquillity. | "In sum, then, our four great post- | war conferences have failed more or less completely and always for the same Teason. Invariably our delega- tions have set out to impose an Ameri- | can solution without regard to Eu-| ropean conditions or policles. At Paris, Wilson did not get a peace of | understanding but the treaty of Ver- | | sailles, at Washington Hughes did not get an end of Anglo-American compe- | tition, but only the substitution of a race in cruisers, in which we started badly, for a race in capital ships, which we had almost won. At Geneva Gib- son got nothing and gave nothing, as the conference broke up in a fight. At London_we won the academic right to parity, but only on the basis of a cer- | tain expenditure of $1,000,000,000 in new construction and the possible ne- cessity for further indefinite expendi- ture resulting from French and Italian | | competition | (Copyright, 1932.) | Health Certificates Of Holland’s Pro GENEVA.—Health certificates for flowering bulbs are the keynotes of the prescription which the Dutch govern- ment has sent to the League of Nations in response to 8 query as to how buyers might ascertain the quality of various commodities sent abroad to world markets. Flowers and bulbs form 2.6 per cent of the total exports of Holland and the country is jealous of their good name. The De Narcis Society, through 10 inspectors, arranges for the control of bulbs in the ground and is empowered to prescribe measures for combating isease. z Exports of healthy narcissus bulbs are covered by certificates issued by the Government Phytopathological Bureau, while the De Narcis Society guaran- tees the name of the variety and the area of cultivation from which they came as being free from plant disease and pests. Other flowering bulbs have Their own sponsors. A similar control covers the export of vegetables, fruits and potatoes, the Iatter being classed as neither fruit nor flowers. Control of expert |- Insure Quality ducts Around Globe} | ties by the Uitvoer Bureau also ap- | plies to tomatoes, cabbages, onions, | | cacumbers and grapes. | Gotng still further away from fruits, flowers and vegetarian fare, government approval stamps are placed on all bar- rels of anchovies and herrings exported, | | while Dutch cheese has a double dis- | | tilled guarantee in packaging and ship- | | ping_which forbids it being mistaken for the excellent Wisconsin brand. (Copyright, 1931.) [ Job Goes Begging. 'rom the Hartford Daily Times. | Despite the widespread unemploy- ment, it is doubtful if there are many eager to take the job of opener of Mus- | solini’s highly explosive mail. ———— | Chicago Side Shows. | From the Omaha Evening World-Herald. | Chicago is having a World Fair next BY WILLIAM N. DOAK, United States Secretary of Labor. N this day of a decrease in immi- gration and of an increase in the number of deported aliens, interest seems to have heightened in the operations of the Immigration l Bureau of the United States Depart- | fess that I feel at times that some of ment of Labor, of which I am at pres- ent the secretary. It needs but a casual reading of many Peace Aliens Are Deported Explains Why Uncle Sam Is Forced to Expel Foreign Born in Droves. AT N ~Drawn for The Sunday Star by Stockton Mulford. The Department of Labor, through |to our country who not only seem un- its Immigration Bureau, is the legal | willing #o live up to the requirements agency upon which devolves the duty of |of citizenship but who seem bent upon enforcing the law as it pertains to aliens | doing their utmost to destroy our Amer- illegally in this country. and to allens |ican civiliaztion. who, legally admitted, have committed | I confess that I cannot understand crimes involving moral turpitude, or | thoroughly why any sound American who engage in activities intended to |should object to expulsion from this destroy our government by force and |country of aliens who vlolfl&: our Irxlws. this misunderstanding is fictitious, and | Violence. | not only by committing crimes against !occasionally I am xfwuned to believe| There are a great many of these | the public good but by advocating open that it is malicious. or War Issue of Hour of the articles in the public prints and | of many of the letters which come to the Labor Department to know that | | there is a misunderstanding in the mind | of many people concerning just what is being done, and how it is being done, | by the bureau which has general charge |of immigration matters. I must con- 'forelgn born who have been admitted (Continued on Fourth Page.) Will Real Progress Be Made at'Disarmament Conference?—Evils of Present-Day Nationalism. BY LORINE PRUETTE. “ME.\' have to have something by.” It is a rising English _politician, g privately, an am- young man with a theory of the s who hopes to go far in the cou Is of his country. “Religion is d Nationalism must take its place, men must have something_to 1 s disaster, ade barriers, intolerable of frontiers, with armed soldiers glaring at each other across i ary lines, with its secret vereins fc ng more soldiers than the law al nationalism with its shrieking newsy s rejoicing at the difficulties of any other country, with its tiresome politicians talking about the absolute and ineradicable dif- ferences between people and that, with its amateur enonomists gabbling about the mecessity of a favorable balance of trade, each for his own country—is it this nationalism that is going to save us all? The young Englishman claims to think so. If he is right in seeing in an in- creased nationalistic spirit the way out of the present international mess, then we should all be of good cheer. It nationalistic fervor is t is needed, then everything will soon be all right, for the European countries have gob nationalism like a cold in the head They have got it like a fever that gives the patient such delightful visions that he would not relinqu is disease if he could. To the wandering observer, after months of observation and miles of wandering, it makes them all seem slightly mad “You Americans," declares the distin- guished German editor, “cannot under- stand the European situation.” Yes, they still like to say that. “You Ameri- cans,” he smiles like an adult speaking to a child, “think everybody should love everybody.” It is a novel reproach. Young America preaching brotherly love to the hate-ridden countries of Europe, and crooning to a distracted universe, “do you know the world is dying for & little-bit-of-love?” I try to find the Jove in America, and instead I think of what the Californians say about the Jowans, and of what Philadelphia thinks of New York. No, I answer, it is not love that makes it possible to travel from Maine to Florida without a visa, from South Carolina to Oregon without seeing & single frontier patrol, nor is it a childlike confidence in brotherly love that leaves the long Canadian frontier unguarded. No, I think, it is not love that keeps us going with so little friction; it is a system that continues to work because it was once recognized as sensible and because there is nothing inherent in the system to breed annoyances and hatreds. For the irritations of trav- eling in Europe and the abundant op- portunities for petty outrages against the foreigner strike me as a potent fac- tor in breeding a nationalism that is founded less on love of country than e hatred of all neighboring~ coun- | year, but the side st.ows will come this | Summer with the two cgaventions. d] 5. “The United States of Eu " German lsughs heartly. gk i s by side in America, how are they ever able to understand each other, much less to trust each other? That, de- clares the editor, is entirely different. In America it is entirely different. Then it must be that the system is different. Under a different system, manage to tolerate each other. Why, then, would it not be possible, under a different system, for them to toler- ate each other in Europe? This may be logic, but logic is not a favored ursuit of European peoples today, un- ess it be Mr. Fay's “different” logic. “If you can't stand each other in Europe, if you can’t ever get together to agree on a tolerable life, then what is the answer to the present European tangle? Must it go on forever?” The German editor knows the an- swer. He does not say ‘nationalism” simply, like the English politician, and let it go at that. He is more precise. The ar-guilt lie” has got to be re- tracted; England and France and the United States must eat their words. Germany is a proud nation; she will never accept the implication, the scan- dalous and libelous implication that she started the war. “But today nobody cares who started the war,” I break in. “Let’s forget that fruitless argument.” “Germany will never forget.” All right, I urge him onward, granted that change, what next? What next? Naturally enough, no more_reparations, The siren song of the Hitlerites. Well, I break in, you are not paying reparations now and no- body really believes that you will start in again at the end of the first year's moratorium, What next? Revision of the treaty, restoration of German ter- ritory, the abolition of the Polish cor- ridor- “But maybe the Poles won't like | that,” T interpose, objectionally enough. And now I can hear the marching feet of the Stalhelms. Germany must have an army. Do I realize that there is only enough ammunition in the coun- try to last two days, do I realize that Germany has no arms, do I realize that Poland can march into Germany any day she wants to and seize all that Eastern territory? Well, if Poland can come in and wants to come in, why doesn't she? His answer is mysterious: “She isn't ready.” But I am feeling a little nasty now, and I push the matter. What really holds Poland back from such ag- gression? Is is possible that public opinion, world opinion, the views of other infiuential nations have some- thing to do with this admirable re- straint? Yes, he admits reluctantl; but he prefers the restraint imposed by a bristling German army. “But how is it possible,” I ask naive- ly, “to know what is right in these boundary disputes? The Poles never would think it right to lose that ter- ritory, would they?” And now I get an answer to more than my question, “Nationalism,” said the Englishman, and stopped there. But what comes out of nationalism? ‘The German is meditating aggression against Poland. “Force!” He speaks the word roundly, boldy. “It is necesary to have force as well as right on your side.” i IF NATIONALISM IS TO SAVE THE WORLD, THEN THE WORLD 1S ALREADY SAVED. —Drawn for The Sunday Star by Joseph Simont. tion” But it is difficult for the un- | comprehending American to see how, |in one small world, there can be so | many logics, so many disciplines and |'s0 many p.-cuhart problems. Nor is it ions. | easy to see greaf erences between icable B«i&?}:’f&‘”fi,fif‘“fihfié" Datiol: | the tribal war dances of the different ifil‘lrl;-nch and the American mind, takes |nations of Europe. the same position: “Every nation | But suppose we grant the absolute needs a different logic and & different differences between the Poles and_the discipline in order to solve the prob- |Germans and the French and the Ital- lems to meu‘md to its posi- | ians—how do they manage to live side 1t can never be. Each na- its own language, its own tra- They can never come to- posstble. tion has ditions. ether.” ¢ He speaks at length upon the inerad- in America, all these lions and lambs | POWER SITUATION CALLS EOR STRICTER REGULATION Neolt for More Effective Superviston of Industry Arises From Increase in Popular Ownership. Nead of the m? which admin- {aters of the hydroelectric resources of the United States Government and an advocate of strict regula- tion, Dr. George Otis Smith, chair~ man of the Federal Power Commis~ sion, was asked for an expression on the “power trust,” in view of the agitation which seems certain to center on this subject in the presidential campaign. In the fol- lowing article, “Father's Electric Light Bill,” Dr. Smith presents his views on the power industry and his_reasons for believing in more rather than less regulation, BY GEORGE OTIS SMITH, Chairman, United States Federal Power Commission. Although members of the Federal Power Commission are prohibited by law from being “in any manner pecu- niarily interested” in any ‘“corporation engaged in the generation, transmis- slon, distribution or sale of power,” I must confess a substantial interest in the power business—just like everybody else among the more than 20,000,000 householders in the United States who use electric current. What and how large that pecuniary interest is can best be shown in terms of the average ultimate consumer—the head of a family who receives a monthly electric light bill. There are more than 85,000,000 per- sons living in electrically lighted homes in the United States. Their consump- tion of electricity varies with latitude and longitude, ranging from that of the average California residential cus- tomer of the electric central statlon, whose annual requirement is more than 1,500 kilowatt hours, to that of the | average householder in a Gulf city, who | uses only about 400 kilowatt hours a year. The average yearly household consumption in the whole United States | is now 580 kilowatt hours. Depends Upon Use. These differences in consumption of electricity are due especially to the varying degree to which the invisible | current is made to help in the house- | wife's work. The best estimates avail- able indicate that over the country as a whole in every 100 families whose dwellings are wired for electricity there are 96 electric flatirons, 77 radio_sets, 48 washing machines, 45 vacuum clean: ers, 40 toasters, 29 percolators, 17 re- frigerators, 16 electric heaters, the same number of electric clocks and sewing machines, and 5 electric ranges. To- gether, these household appliances ac- count for nearly half the home con- sumption of electric current. ‘Throughout the country the rates paid for this residential service vary greatly, but State regulation and tech- nical advances and increase of busi- ness, all working together, are con- stantly reducing these rates practically everywhere. Yet the average price is not going down fast enough to offset the average increase in consumption. ‘The result is that the monthly bill pai by the head of the average family is slowly going up. Just now that average bill is $2.84. A year ago it was $2.72. But in the meantime some 3,000,000 new refrig- erators, washing machines, ranges and vacuum cleaners have been put into service, not to mention many thousands of the smaller labor-saving household appliances. May Expect Increase. ‘These kitchen facts explain why the average family is using 32 kilowatt hours more of current than a year ago. And we may expect a further increase this year if the Association of Electric Refrigerator Manufacturers reaches its selling goal of a million more homes supplied with this type of refrigerator. Of course, your interest and mine in the product of the power industry does not stop with the current which comes into our homes and for which we indi- vidually pay. City streets are lighted, Urban cars and elevators and a few railroads are supplied with motive power, and many industrial plants have their countless wheels turned by elec- tricity from the same great central stations where either steam or water furnishes the energy. Our expenditures for electricity are in part of this intangible kind that we pay indirectly, and therefore uncon- sciously, whenever we buy transporta- tlon or commodities—even chickens are hatched by electric heat, and the work- g;xggmdny of hens is regulated by electric Revenue $2,000,000,000. The total revenues of the power com- panies are approximately $2,000,000,000 a year, of which only about one-third comes from the residential service we pay for directly. This might be termed the retail business, with more than 20,000,000 customers. The much larger quantity of electrieity, sold to more than 4,000,000 customers, is the whole- sale end of the business. And it is interesting to note that during the last two years it has been the wholesale business of the power companies that has fallen off, while the retail business has generally shown a goodly increase, in part owing to the enterprise shown by many companies in offering bargains, more politely termed promotional rates. All this refers to your interest and mine in the business as customers. But Wwho owns all the 3,900 power stations, | the 211,000 miles of transmission lines stretching across the country, and the network of hidden cables beneath the city streets? The simple answer is that all this property, worth some $12,800,- 000,000, belongs to about 2,600 operat- ing companies, with the exception of about 750 municipal plants, whose out- long %0, or at least are controlled by, some 30 so-called holding companies. ‘Then the next question is, who owns these operating and holding companies? The answer isn't at all easy. Perhaps the most that can be said is that 2,000,000 or more of you own the stocks of these public utilities. Perhaps no kind of investment is more popular, no kind of stock is more generally owned, this wide distribution being due to the customer-ownership plan in- vented by the electric light and power people. Popular Ownership a Fact. In several parts of the United States, East as well as West, we know that the ratlo of local owners to customers is something like one to ten. In the last dozen years the customers have pur- chased "14 per cent of the securities sold by the light and power companies. To that degree we can say that the consumers own the power plants that generate the electricity they use, and participation in the profits is divided among millions of widely scattered men and women. Popular ownership of the power industry is already a fact. What, however, would be the result if every customer was also an owner in this electric light and power business? What would happen if there were 10 times as many owners as now—20,000,~ 000 stockholders rather than 2,000,000? What would father have to pay then, if the consumers themselves rather than any so-called power trust furnished the capital invested in generating plants, transmission lines and distributing sys- tems? Although the residential customers pay about one-third of the revenues of the power companies, they consume only one-sixth of the current. How- ever, as the average householder or retail customer is the most exacting of all the consumers, big or little, in that he uses most of his current in a few hours of the 24, it seems probable that 1t he represented the only class of cus- tomers, to meet his demands adequately | would " require a generating capacity much larger than one-sixth of the present and a distributing system not much less extensive than the present. So, as father pays one-third of the bills, we might, for the purpose of our illustration, let him and others like him own one-third of the power busi- ness. These 20,000,000 customer-own=- ers then would need to invest in the power companies of the country about $4,000,000,000, or $200 apiece. ‘Who Gets $217 Of course, on this stock, at the latest census figure of 6.6 per cent as the average dividend rate, father would re- celve an income of $13.20 & year. His average annual payment, however, for electricity for heme use is $34.10, s0 that there would be a difference of $20.90 a year between his bills and his dividends. Where does this $21 go? ‘There’s the rub of the whole power question, Who gets it? Now, there are avallable some on the breakdown of the average recetved from the ultimate consumer of electric current, and these percentages can be used to trace out the where- abouts of the missing $20.90. e largest single item in expendi- tures by the electric light and power industry consists of wages and nm'ks even though relatively to its gross reve- nue this industry has a pay roll less than half that of the railroads. Yet even though the generation and dis- tribution of electricity is labor-cheap, more than a third of that $20.90, or $7.26, goes for the pay roll. The next largest item comprises taxes of all kinds—Federal, State and local—to the amount of $3.44. A little more than $3 is spent for fuel—less than a third of the electricity produced is now generated by water power—and somewhat more than®$2 is the cost of the other supplies and materials neces- sary for operation. Two other items that are relatively unimportant in this industry as compared with other lines of business are uncollected bills and rents, each only 14 cents. Regulation Is Necessary. The remaining $4.53 goes for depr: ciation and the other greserves ngs; lutely necessary to safeguard the in- vestment of the stockholders and the service to the consumers. Without this reserve the average rate for home cur-. rent could be reduced 3 of a cent a kilowatt hour, or the dividends could be increased 2 per cent, neither of which would seer%:referable to having this moderate factor of safety present |in the undertaking. As a matter of fact, this popular ownership of the electric light and power business of the country is in- creasing. And the protection of the millions of private investors, not to mention the insurance companies and savings banks in whose solvency the average citizen has a real interest, be- comes an added reason for strict su- pervision of the power industry. Regulation by both State and Federal commissions has already contributed to making the industry more reliable and conservative, as well as more efficlent and progressive. With the increasing dependence upon the electric current by the country's industries, homes and farms, and the broadening circle of in- vestors as well as of customers, the present national need is for more ‘ef- fective, rather than less active, regula- tion in the public interest. However, considering it simply as the source of one item in the family budget, the electric light and power business. With its monthly bill of only $2.84 to the average householder, might reason- ably be regarded as presenting less of an impelling political issue than the quality of the nickel cigar, once pro- Posed by Vice President Marshall, as an economic problem of national import. put is not quite 4 per cent of the whole. Most of the commercial companies be- (Copyright, 1932, by the North Newspaper Alliance, Tnc.) *TerieAn PRAGUE.—An American is the au- thoress of the most interesting book read this year by the Czechoslovak President, T. G. Masaryk. He votes the palm to “Shadows on the Rock,” by Willa Cather, as is revealed by the an- swers to a questionnaire circulated by the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny. American literature is an old Jove of the Grand Old Man of Czechoslovakia. In his volume of war memories he in- cludes a long essay on American litera- ture, displaying profound knowledge of this subject. All, even the most recent, developments of American literature in- terest. him. Among woman authors he makes special mention in his book of Dorothy Canfleld and Willa Cather, the latter particularly well known here by her novel, “My Antonia,” which deals Wwith the lives of Czech immigrants in the Middle West. And, as the above- mentioned questionnaire discloses, the President’s sympathies for this author- ess have not diminished. Answering the question “What is the most intgresting book you have read this year?” ‘the leading personalities of Czechoslovak public and cultured life exhibit widely different Mazaryk Declares Best Book of Year Written by Willa Cather, U. S. Woman Karel Capek, the writer who gave the word “robot” to the English language, expresses preference for Richard Hughes' “A High Wind in Jamaica” and John Masefield’s “Odtaa.” (Copyright, 1931) \Reich Church Restores Master’s Old Frescoes BERLIN, Germany.—Mural frescoes, believed to be the work of a great Ger- man master during the second half of the fifteenth century, are being restored in the St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in Brel- sach-on-Rhine, Although German experts on mural frescoes have not as yet determined the author of those laid bare in connection with the restoration work going on in the St. Stephen’s, all indications seem to point to the ancient German master, Martin Schongauer. This assumption is based on the fact that Herr Schongauer settled in Brei- B’:&l’; in 1489, dying there two years